What Cibo Matto's Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori Eat for Breakfast

Welcome to My Morning Routine, where we take a look at how people kick-start the day. And by “people” we mean celebrities.

New York band Cibo Matto loves food. And by “love,” we mean if food had a birth certificate and a Social Security number, they’d stuff it into a tuxedo and trot it down to City Hall. Of course, longtime fans of the band—formed by Japanese expats Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori—already know this. When the band became a college-radio staple in the mid-’90s, they regaled hipster kids with food-themed songs like “Know Your Chicken,” “White Pepper Ice Cream,” “Pain Perdu,” and “Birthday Cake.” When the duo made an appearance on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, they performed “Sugar Water” as

Sarah Michelle Gellar did a sexy dance while the forces of evil coalesced around her. The melodious noshes ended when Honda and Hatori broke up the band in 2011, but they reunited in 2011 at a benefit concert for victims of the east Japan earthquake. Honda and Hatori recently sat down for a chat with Bon Appetit to reveal two things: They expect to put out a new album this year–they’re currently debuting some of their new songs at shows in Brooklyn—and they still really, really like to eat.

Yuka (left) and Miho (Credit: Courtesy Cibo Matto)

Yuka: In the morning I come downstairs and I put the water in the water boiler—I have an electric kettle—and I think of which tea I want to have. And if I’m feeling groggy but strong, I have green tea, or sometimes I have black tea. Then I have this thing called EMX, it’s this kind of enzyme thing I get from Japan—I have a tiny bit of health nut in me.

And then, I always make my favorite sandwich. Always. Every morning. It’s whole rye bread—I grew up in Germany, so I really love this whole rye bread, very dark and wet bread—and I slice thin slices of tomato and put them on first, and I put on a thin slice of avocado and put this on, and then a slice of cheese called Comte, a French cheese, a little nutty but a little less fatty and maybe a little more stinky but not too much, and then I cut it in half—the bread is a long rectangle, so it becomes two perfect squares. Everyone in my house makes fun of me every time I eat it, but I think it’s the best thing in the world.

Miho: I am so amazed to hear Yuka’s morning routine. Mine starts from tea, hot tea, for sure. Sometimes hibiscus tea with honey. And it could be Earl Grey; I put in milk and make it really sweet. But after having tea, it’s a scramble. I check e-mails, but [for food] it depends on the mood and the time.

Sometimes I just want cold Japanese rice. When I have time, a simple rice dish, Japanese-style, and fried egg.

Yuka: We really do have to tailor our breakfasts because there are not a lot of options. Sometimes we wake up late and we look for Japanese lunch. We do usually eat rice and fish and hearty stuff in the morning. Last time we were in Seattle, we woke up and got Vietnamese noodles, and I was so happy. Sometimes we have to wake up at 8 in the morning and then maybe the best stop we can make is Starbucks and then highway stops. Those are hard days. We would eat, like, bananas.

But it tastes much better than the situation we had back in the 1990s. There was no Starbucks, and it was very hard to find a decent coffee place for our crews. Starbucks really does help; it has oatmeal and…

Miho: …oatmeal is like the old-time version of rice for us. So we put salt in the oatmeal to make it like rice, maybe a little salt and cheese. From my experience, I think Parmesan cheese is the best.

Yuka: Sometimes when I make oatmeal, I put in miso and flavors of ginger.

Miho: Oooh! That sounds good! We used to be very happy when we were touring the South and we could eat grits, which is kind of like rice. We could go to Waffle House and eat the grits. Ooh, remember that?

Yuka: With eggs and salt.

Miho: We like hot, wet food in the morning.

Yuka: My sandwich is neither hot nor wet, but ….

Miho: I can’t remember the last time I ate [French toast—which inspired one of their early songs, "Le Pain Perdu"].

Yuka: I remember when I thought it was the best food in the world.

Miho: Last time we were together, we went to some cafe after midnight after a show, and that was really good—French Roast in New York, two weeks ago.

Yuka: Sometimes when you open the fridge and see some cake and start eating it—it was that kind of feeling. It was like, it’s hard sometimes to change those, how do you say, food stereotypes, like French toast has to be in the morning.

Miho: I think if you had a magic wand, we would eat rice and miso soup and egg custard and pickles and make that into dinner, and that would be the most ideal food. But in America nobody does it. In Japan you pig out in the morning, and then you eat a light lunch, like soba noodles.

Yuka: We definitely became a food band because we love food and we talk about it all day long.